This
is an address given at the invitation of the German Dharmaduta Society
to commemorate the second death anniversary of Asoka Weeraratna (later
Ven. Mitirigala Dhammanisanthi Thero) at the Mahaweli Centre Auditorium
in Colombo, Sri Lanka on the 7th of July 2002.

The
challenge that Buddhism faces today is not with the Dharma itself, the
Buddha's teaching - as
the timeless message embedded in the Four Noble Truths maintains its
validity - but how to present this ancient teaching as a meaningful
alternative to people who have been shaped by the values of the consumer
society.

There
is a new era of technological innovation sweeping the world, which has
spawned a new medium - the Internet's
World Wide Web, a very powerful communications network and learning
environment. The Internet should not be seen as just a new way to disseminate
or repackage the Buddha's teachings but potentially as a base for an
innovative online Dharma Community - a Cyber Sangha, that offers alternative
social and spiritual values.

Online
Growth

On what grounds
can we realistically predict the future of the Internet? Well we can
get some idea from the trend in the online growth. At present about
6% of the world's population uses the Internet. Almost one billion people,
or 15 per cent of the world's population, are predicted to be using
the Internet by 2005. Last year, the US accounted for 34 per cent of
Internet users, Europe 29 per cent and Japan 10 per cent. By 2005, web
use in Europe and Asia will outpace that of the US. And according to
reports, the spread of mobile phones and other devices that link users
to the Internet will add to this increase.

In less-developed
nations, the reality is that, most people lack access or cannot afford
the Internet or modem communications. Overall, about 400 million of
the world's six billion use the Internet daily. Those growing up on
the Internet will one day make up the bulk of the population and there
will be very few nonusers down the road.

When you look at
online religion - it can only be expected to boom. Eight per cent of
adults and 12 per cent of teenagers in the US use the Internet for religious
or spiritual experiences, and the number is likely to grow rapidly,
according to a study. So in spite of the drop in interest in mainstream
religions and increasing secularization, which is the view that one's
life can or should be carried out without a religious element, the age-old
search for meaning has found the new medium - the net.

A
Globalised World

The linking together
of the world's population in the globalised economy is undermining the
individual's ability to function as a cooperative, responsible member
of their society. This happens because the ultimate effect of corporate
culture is to reduce the person to a mere consumer, on the assumption
that happiness can be achieved through acquisitiveness and the enjoyment
of goods.

Buddhism has within
it a social dimension that can address global problems, a way to "heal
the wounds of the world". This way is the Buddha's Noble Eightfold
Path, the practice of which while personal, requiring individual effort
has consequences that are deeply social. So there is a need now for
the socially engaged side of Buddhism to be combined with personal growth
and the path of liberation as the answer to the individual's alienation.

It will require
radical changes before we can see any alternative to current values
and attitudes. Yet the Internet could bring about such a social revolution
in values, as the corporate world, try as it might has not yet succeeded
in dominating it.

If we creatively
use the technology, the Net can cater for the religious or spiritual
side of human nature and the means of offering care and compassion in
this digital world.

Buddhism with its
ancient teaching and cultures must seize the opportunity and adapt itself
so that it can make a meaningful contribution to the social and spiritual
needs of the inhabitants of this blue planet via this new medium.

While Buddhism is
not a religion that proselytes, that is, seeking to win over or convert,
it certainly has a sense of its own mission in spreading its message.
In the past the Buddha's Teachings spread slowly, not only due to the
limitations of ancient communications, but because it needed to make
a local adaptation to each new culture it encountered.

For example, it
took the Buddha's Dharma about 500 years to go from India to China.
It is not only the time factor, but also the need to transform itself
into "Chinese Buddhism". That is, it had to accommodate itself
to the indigenous religions and philosophies. Taoism and Confucianism,
before it was acceptable locally. But in the process of accommodating
itself to the local culture the Teaching is transformed and can be very
different from the original.

The difference in
a Globalised World is that the acceptance of the Buddha's teachings
does not depend on whether it can accommodate itself to a particular
culture or religion but the appeal of its core insights. In fact the
cultural accretion has to be differentiated from the core understandings
before it can be seen to resonate with universal truths. So, in an increasingly
secular and Globalised World where technology and scientific appraisal
is all pervasive, the Dharma or Truth itself stands alone.

The challenge now
is can the Sangha, that is, committed communities of Buddhists, use
the tools and acquire the skills of the Digital Age? And further, can
we find new ways and means of presenting the Buddha's teachings that
are relevant to the digital world rather than the traditional methods
of sermons and ritual that has little or no appeal to the technocratic
generation.

It's not just technical
skills that are needed but the motivation of selfless service and compassion
- core values of the Buddha Dharma as expressed in the ancient Bodhisattva
ideal. It is becoming increasingly self-evident that we have to move
from the limitation of individual and national boundaries to a worldview
of a shared planet.

If such a notion
as a Cyber Sangha is to come into being - and realistically it will
probably take a generational change - it will either come about when
young monks in the scholarly tradition in Buddhist countries go online
or more likely, as is happening now, the new generation of Western Buddhists,
who are not on the whole conditioned by a particular Buddhist culture,
produce more appealing e-Dharma content for its own.

For the traditionalists
- hankering for the past - there can be no going back, as it would be
foolish to think that one can create some sort of "Virtual Temple"
based on ritual and ceremony. Or that one can recreate the particular
cultural customs of Buddhism on the net, which unfortunately the pure
Buddha's teachings have become so embedded in.

The role of an online
Sangha is to offer a spiritual alternative while dissemination the Dharma
through E-learning (electronic Dharma). This would need to go hand in
hand with the servicing of the needs of people who are experiencing
negative aspects of the Globalised Economy - the pressures and stresses
it creates.

Buddhist
Insights and the Internet

In a rapidly changing
digital world, where many are stretched and stressed, we need to come
to terms with the effects of such stress and pressure on the human psyche.
I'm not suggesting that we create some 'virtual utopia' as the Dharma
tells us that there is no certainty and that things are inherently unstable
and insecure. The experiential knowing of this Insight allows us to
let go and be free of clinging to that which is known, to block the
flow. This acceptance of change and the ability to work with it is in
the words of Alan Watts the "Wisdom of Insecurity".

The Internet gives
us many opportunities to promote Buddhist values, understandings and
Insights on a global scale. Buddhism has survived materially until now
because of the practice of "Dana", which is a culture of sharing
and service, as opposed to the greed culture based on monetary values.
This leads to misuse of the technology, as the motivation is merely
to make a dollar, as we have seen in the recent collapse of the Dotcoms,
which views the Internet as a market place it can exploit. In contrast
to this we have the example to the earlier BBS (Bulletin Board System),
which had a culture based on a genuine sharing and learning community
offering a largely free service operated by volunteers. This is the
way an online Dharma Community will ideally operate - as a focal point,
a hub for community sharing and support.

In the spiritual
vacuum called the Modern World - with its preoccupation with having
it all, there is a need to make known the contribution that Buddhist
mental culture can offer. The techniques of meditation, for example,
can be explained and illustrated very well on the Net through streaming
audio and video, with the student being guided by an online teacher.
The characteristic of the Internet is its interconnectivity - global
interdependence. This is a core Buddhist understanding, a universal
truth. Its appreciation leads to the maturity that moves from an ego-self
preoccupation to an interconnectivity that empathizes with all suffering
life.

There will be a
new emphasis on lifelong learning, on training and retraining, of development
and innovation. This era of all-encompassing change will need to be
accompanied by an ability to cope with the pressures caused by the new
technologies, without becoming overextended and stressed. So we will
need to have the skills to manage our own mental health through the
healing practices and Insights that the Dharma can give us.

We are seeing that
the psychological and healing side of Buddhism is being utilized by
modern Psychotherapy, that there has been a shift from what were predominantly
the ritual needs of lay people, to a search for help and support in
an increasingly alienated world. So counselling services in the form
of interactive multimedia via the net is the way of the future, as is
demonstrated by the popular "chat culture" on the Net.

It is to be hoped
that a Cyber Sangha would be supported by, or be an extension of the
locally based Buddhist establishments, as it evolves into a network
of like-minded people - lay and ordained - who come together as an online
community - followers of the Buddha - living out the Insight of the
Dharma and communicating the Buddha's message of intelligence and compassion
in this new Digital World.

E-learning or Electronic
Buddhist learning can become a tool for spiritual as well as social
development, when access is improved and learning techniques are refined.
The reality is that it can never altogether replace face-to-face teachings
but has added a new delivery medium that allows for skill-enhancement
and easy accessible training. The worldwide Buddhist community will
need to develop its own e-learning content with the traditions coming
together and pooling their knowledge and skills and researching new
ways of presenting the Buddha's Teachings out of compassion for this
suffering world.

Information
or Knowledge?

It has never been
considered that the Buddha's teachings are to be found only in the text,
actually in the past the Dharma was transmitted as much through oral
teachings. There is a temptation to merely dump data (facts) online
rather than exploit the new ways of presenting information that the
technology provides. Data and information do not necessarily translate
into knowledge.

The temple approach
in teaching the Dharma is through sermons with the teacher and the content
being unchallenged. The new way is through group learning via discussion.
On the Net its through chat groups where the teacher or moderator acts
as a facilitator for an ongoing debate or discussion.

The benefit of Internet
learning is that you have access to information, and you also have access
to other people, students or experts. It's the combination of the two
that provides an extra dimension than most other technologies. In fact
what is happening now is that students are looking for resources themselves
and then interacting with them.

Learning from animated
characters that act as virtual teachers, could be the future of online
learning. Experts predict that successful electronic learning computer
programs will become more sensitive to human nuances and motivation
- software that initiate human interaction.

The
Digital Divide

Until recently exaggerated
publicity or hype in the news media about the Internet was common, but
with the collapse of the Dotcoms we can take a more sober view of the
situation. The reality was and is more of a digital divide, which is
a term for the difficulties some groups in society face in even getting
access to computers and the Internet.

This especially
applies to the economically disadvantaged Buddhist countries in the
Theravada tradition, Cambodia, Myanmar and here in Sri Lanka. Online
technology is unequally distributed because access to and use of computers
and the Internet mirror the socioeconomic divide between rich and poor
individuals and nations. Another factor is that the English language
dominates cyberspace so students and others with little or no understanding
of English are often denied access to online learning. Although this
is changing as the Net is becoming more multi-lingual.

The
True Buddhist Teaching or Not?

Another matter that
we will have to face is how can we know that what is posted on the Internet
is an authentic Buddhist Teaching or not? The way to judge this is to
match what is posted with the Four Noble Truths as all Buddhist traditions
accept the Four Noble Truths as the structure for their practice in
one form or another. But there have been individuals who make extravagant,
even bizarre claims to some special knowledge or Enlightenment. I can
suggest at least one way to judge this. The transmission of knowledge
in Buddhism is essentially based on lineage, which is the verification
of the students understanding by a lineage teacher or master. While
there is a purely text based teachings, the scholarly tradition, the
practice of mental culture is based on experiential learning which can
be checked by a lineage holder. So whether the postings on the Internet
claiming to be the Buddha's Dharma are authentic Buddhist Teachings
or not, or whether it is just the concoction of a cult - could be checked
through its lineage, or lack of it.

What
of the Future?

While for some it
may seem rather futuristic, broadband and interactive technology promises
an enormous expansion of the potential of the World Wide Web to create
a true online community and enhance online learning. On the other hand,
we have to work with the current limitations until the interactive technology
matures. And especially, we will have to come to terms with the realities
in Buddhist countries that are being left behind in the information
revolution.

One way to address
this problem is the use of hybrid technology. To this end we are developing
ways to deliver e-learning content via the text-based material on the
Web or through Intranets using CD-ROM. For example, BuddhaNet has produced
a CD-ROM on "Buddhist Studies for Primary and Secondary Students"
that can be use on an Intranet in schools or Dharma centres. The CDs
is actually a web page (HTML files) that includes Adobe PDF (Portable
Document Files) documents of all of the material, which when printed
can then be photocopied. Also we have produced a multimedia CD that
interfaces with our web site, and includes over sixty Buddhist eBooks.

The traditional
temples and bricks and mortar centres will continue to service people
needs for the Dharma, yet this can be expanded and enhanced, and may
I say made more relevant, if the evolving Cyber Sangha, who need resources,
is supported in its aim to develop the Dharma online using the latest
technology that is available.

Because a teaching
is ancient that doesn't mean that it cannot sit comfortably with the
new technology. If the Buddha were alive today, he would surely be at
ease in the digital world. There is a new generation growing up with
the Internet's technologies, who regard it as the natural place to find
information, for online learning and for spiritual and emotional support.
Can we hope that it will be a place that one goes to have a meaningful
experience of the Buddha's Dharma as well - it's the future!

* Venerable Pannyavaro
is the Webmaster of Buddhanet, President of the Buddha Dharma Education
Association and a Vice-President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists.